The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Execution of software applications on MFP devices is usually tracked by monitoring user licenses installed for the applications. Although installing licenses may be a complex and difficult process, installing the licenses is usually a preferred business practice. To install a user license for a particular software application on an MFP device, a technician may have to obtain a machine serial number of the MFP device, launch an activation Web application, and enter the machine serial number into a GUI of the Web application to obtain a license code for the license. After the license code is obtained, the technician may have to launch another activation application to store the license code on the MFP device. Once performance of these steps is completed, users may start executing the particular application on the MFP device.
There are also some software applications that could be executed without installing a user license for the applications. Examples of such applications include various applications designed to facilitate access to cloud-printing services. Tracking an execution of such applications may be difficult, and permitting the execution without a license could lead to undesired business practices and trends.